Facebook now boasts the second largest number of online video viewers, following YouTube, but Facebook viewers are watching significantly less content than viewers on other sites.

October 2011 was a huge month for online video with more than 42.6 billion videos viewed by a total of 184.4 million US viewers. Of course, Google’s YouTube topped the charts as usual, accounting for 160.9 million of these viewers, but a new player joined the rankings of sites with the most online video viewers this month—Facebook. Facebook now boasts the second largest number of online video viewers, following YouTube.
The news came out of comScore’s October 2011 US Online Video Rankings and was reported by Joshua Cohen of Tubefilter. Cohen points out that Facebook saw over 166 million unique visitors in October. According to the comScore stats, over 59.8 million of these watched at least one video on the social site. Facebook managed to surpass VEVO (which usually takes the top spot) by a mere 3 million viewers. Facebook also clocked in ahead of Microsoft and Viacom, who were in the fourth and fifth spots, respectively, in September of this year.

It is important to point out, however, that more viewers doesn’t mean more videos, or more time spent watching. Although Facebook came in second place in terms of the number of viewers, these viewers are watching far less content. YouTube viewers watched an average of 7.07 hours of video (up from 6.3 in September), while Facebook viewers only watched an average of 18.4 minutes. VEVO users watched an average of 1 hour and 6 minutes in October.

It could be concluded from the above that, while the social aspect of Facebook is getting more people to actually click and watch a video, when viewers really want to watch video content they’re heading to sites like YouTube and VEVO and not to Facebook.

Do you watch video on Facebook? If so, how much do you think you watch in a month? How does that compare to your YouTube viewing habits? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.

Megan O’Neill is the resident web video enthusiast here at Social Times. Megan covers everything from the latest viral videos to online video news and tips, and has a passion for bizarre, original and revolutionary content and ideas.